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Monthly Archives: November 2008

YouTube has gone widescreen (note: this link currently breaks if your YouTube preference is for a non-US locale, eg for Aussies you end up here, which currently displays nothing).

The only catch of course is that 4:3 videos now appear letterboxed… or whatever the vertical term for letterboxed is.

My question is: why? Why not just make the player (at least on the YouTube web site) the aspect ratio of the video that it's playing?

In fact at the moment, embedded 16:9 videos still appear letterboxed; 4:3 videos “full screen” … what should happen is that the embedding code should define the player size and so match the video's aspect ratio.

You've probably heard this already, but you may be able to tell Youtube to display higher quality video by adding &fmt=22 onto the URL… that is, if higher-quality video was uploaded by the content creator.

But unbelievably, they put the disc 1 layer change in the stupidest spot ever. Rather than put it between episodes, or even at a quiet spot within an episode, they put it in the middle of a song (Dexys Midnight Runners singing “Jackie Wilson Said”).

Idiots!

Haven't checked yet where the disc 2 layer change is. The disc 2 layer change is at the start of a song in Time.

News that council workers in Wales sent an email request to their translation officer to translate the English “No entry for heavy goods vehicles”… what they got in reply was an Out Of Office reply in Welsh, but not realising, they printed that on the sign.

So the Welsh part of the sign reads: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”